Foreign Invasion

[sidurgu-12]

The Warrior of Light's usage and skill in the Echo in universe can be more or less summed up as: "This power of mine responds to a need, not a desire."

I'd have thought the likelihood of us ever truly becoming "proficient" in the Echo was made clear when in the tail end of Stormblood the most we could do with it after all that we'd been though up to that point was a shitty bubble shield made of equally thin and insubstantial aether. But, that's what you get when your dear Mother Sunders every soul in the world without consent. Humanity becomes collectively less awesome.

Edit: Also, most of the "cooler" powers and abilities we'd seen the Echo facilitate up to that point are abilities seen as "evil" by the bumbling populace, like Ascian body-surfing.

are you talking about the fight against lakshmi with fordolas help? if so that was the travelers ward in action.

[SentioftheHoukai]

are you talking about the fight against lakshmi with fordolas help? if so that was the travelers ward in action.

How weird, then. Thought that was Mother's magic, not ours. Smells me a RETCON, I do. No really, actually go back and watch the scene. We put our hand up in an awesome power pose and everything. It was clearly intended to appear as though we were directing the flow of the aether off our unshielded comrades. This "Traveler's Ward" you speak of is not our magick, and cast on us without our foreknowledge or consent. Hardly something we have acute control over.

[Necrotica]

How weird, then. Thought that was Mother's magic, not ours. Smells me a RETCON, I do. No really, actually go back and watch the scene. We put our hand up in an awesome power pose and everything. It was clearly intended to appear as though we were directing the flow of the aether off our unshielded comrades. This "Traveler's Ward" you speak of is not our magick, and cast on us without our foreknowledge or consent. Hardly something we have acute control over.

Wait wait wait wait wait.

What if it WAS the echo this whole time protecting us?
Venat could have been lying. Taking credit for something she did not do in order to try and make us more indebted to her.
Her travelers ward could be a kind of aether protector. And the echo could be a super ultra better version of that.

We show up wearing a suit of armor and she hands us a paper hat and claims that is what was protecting us all this time.

[EaraGrace]

Beyond parody at this point.

[Cilia]

It's just vague what's doing what until Venat tells us verbatim in Endwalker, not really retconning anything. Ifrit attributes our immunity to tempering to the Blessing, but everyone else says it's the Echo (likely because they don't know any better). Raises the question of how Resonance works, but.

The PC isn't actively controlling the Blessing, Echo, or flow of aether during the Lakshmi scene(s). They're just standing between the tempering blasts and letting it bounce off of them.

You're trying a bit too hard.

[sidurgu-12]

It's just vague what's doing what until Venat tells us verbatim in Endwalker, not really retconning anything. Ifrit attributes our immunity to tempering to the Blessing, but everyone else says it's the Echo (likely because they don't know any better). Raises the question of how Resonance works, but.

The PC isn't actively controlling the Blessing, Echo, or flow of aether during the Lakshmi scene(s). They're just standing between the tempering blasts and letting it bounce off of them.

You're trying a bit too hard.

i dont think they know how to do it any other way.

[Necrotica]

The complete retcon of the Echo/Blessing is in no way reaching. It was blatant and pointless and was only done to make mommy Venat more awesome and cool.

[RyuDragnier]

The complete retcon of the Echo/Blessing is in no way reaching. It was blatant and pointless and was only done to make mommy Venat more awesome and cool.

The Echo is a 20% mitigation. The Blessing of Light is a 30% mitigation. They're stacking for a 44% mitigation.

[Iscah]

It's just vague what's doing what until Venat tells us verbatim in Endwalker, not really retconning anything. Ifrit attributes our immunity to tempering to the Blessing, but everyone else says it's the Echo (likely because they don't know any better). Raises the question of how Resonance works, but.

The effects of the Echo and Blessing definitely got retconned/reversed/forgotten-and-reassigned somewhere between Heavensward and Endwalker.

Midgardsormr sealed the Blessing of Light and apparently left us with only the Echo, which apparently stopped Hydaelyn from speaking to us, but we were still shielded from primal influence.

From the same era, the first lorebook seems to attribute most of our powers to the Echo while linking the Blessing to receiving direct contact or power-ups from Hydaelyn, like being shielded from Ultima.

That said, I don't see how reversing them makes Venat look any better than leaving them as they were earlier established. It seems more likely that they somehow forgot that they had established the difference already, because it seems too big a thing to deliberately rewrite.

[SentioftheHoukai]

It's just vague what's doing what until Venat tells us verbatim in Endwalker, not really retconning anything. Ifrit attributes our immunity to tempering to the Blessing, but everyone else says it's the Echo (likely because they don't know any better). Raises the question of how Resonance works, but.

The PC isn't actively controlling the Blessing, Echo, or flow of aether during the Lakshmi scene(s). They're just standing between the tempering blasts and letting it bounce off of them.

You're trying a bit too hard.

No, I'm not. They made it clear this situation was unprecedented, if it wasn't we would have shielded the innocent soldiers behind us all the way back when we fought Ifrit simply by virtue of having been stood in front of them. If you were right about us simply standing in front of those we sought to protect from Lakshmi's tempering, that is. You are the one who is making a mistake or forgetting details.